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Detroit's Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes targets new shops

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One of downtown Detroit's favorite small businesses is spreading its wings not only across the Metro Detroit region but across the Midwest.

Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes is opening up a new location in Toledo and building out a new space in Grosse Pointe. The Detroit-based creperie is also looking at opening in a few other spots in southeast Michigan and even other major metro areas in the Midwest, such as Chicago. This latest burst of expansion is expected to grow the company's payroll from eight people today to 24 by the end of the year.

Expanding in today's tight credit market is no easy feat for small businesses. Torya Blanchard, Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes' founder and owner, says she is accomplishing this by taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to her. For instance, Blanchard says the Toledo location, which is near the University of Toledo, was formerly a café, making the expansion inexpensive.

"It's a lot of hard work and good luck," Blanchard says. "You need to keep your nose to the grindstone and make rational decisions."

She adds that she is expanding the creperie in the Park Shelton building (next to the DIA) in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood from 900 to 1,700 square feet. The original small stand in downtown Detroit next to Oslo is closed for good while Blanchard focuses her business on sit-down spaces.

"I feel very nostalgic for that location. It's my baby," Blanchard says. "But it takes as much work as a sit-down location. I hope someone else can use that location as a place to get their start now."